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A recent social survey by the municipal government found that most Beijing residents put addressing air pollution as top environmental priority in the next five years.
The 13th Five-Year-Plan compiling work leading group office of Beijing government released the results of a survey on residents’ need yesterday, showing that 94.2 percent of the respondents chose “air pollution” as the answer to question “what is the environmental problem you most wish to solve in the next five years”.
“It’s the highest rate during this survey, reflecting the public’s high consensus and expectation on tackling atmospheric pollution,” Wang Tao, general manager of the commissioned research firm.
In responding to the question “what measures will be effective to clean the air”, 66.2 percent of the respondents chose “vehicle emission restriction”, 49.4 percent of them believe closing polluting enterprises to be necessary, while 39.1 percent pin their hope on increasing greenbelt in the city.
Other concerned environmental problems include water pollution, garbage pollution, dust pollution, soil pollution, noise pollution and forestry destruction.
Raising awareness of saving water, recycling water resources, improving the efficiency of water usage through technical means are solutions widely acknowledged by the respondents to relieve the capital city’s water shortage.
The megacity with a population of more than 20 million people has less than 100 cubic meters of water per capita, which is only 5 percent of that in China and 1.25 percent of the world’s average.
Greenbelt is another concern for residents. 60.7 percent of the respondents hope to increase green space in the downtown area, while 46.5 percent want to incorporate building green space into construction standards of residential community and public buildings. Nearly half of the respondents expressed the will to adopt lawn or woods in the city.
Although Beijing has been promoting garbage sorting for years, the survey got lukewarm response on the issue. A significant 49.5 percent of the respondents said they still don’t know how to sort garbage, while 45.5 percent just don’t want to be bothered to do it. 42.7 percent reported lack of garbage sorting facilities in communities.
